Michael said, seeming to muse over this new information. “I never met Jeffrey Dell. Jill said he was very clever.” That seemed to sum up all Michael knew about the man—or cared to know. Michael was not the kind of spouse to concern himself with his wife’s former life. “Jill didn’t talk much about Jeffrey Dell.”
Just then Michael was exercised about a letter he had received from Michael Scammell, Arthur Koestler’s authorised biographer, raising doubts that his subject had actually raped Jill. Certain of her friends had expressed their skepticism to Scammell, he reported. Michael pronounced Scammell’s name so that it sounded to me like “Scoundrel. “I’m going to write to the fellow in a pretty fierce way.” Michael revered the author of Darkness at Noon, a riveting exposé of Stalinist tyranny that Michael had stayed up reading all night when it was published in 1940. Michael was quite proud of his role in introducing Koestler’s writing to a British audience. As editor of the Evening Standard, he arranged for Koestler to write a column because he “knew more about what was happening in Spain than almost anybody. He was very good to teach the bloody fool English how these things run. I knew him as well as anybody.” Michael fondly remembered the pre-rape days, when he and Jill had socialised with Koestler, visiting him in France along with Richard Crossman and his wife.
Michael then retold the story of the rape. “She didn’t report it to me then, and she did not report it to anybody,” Michael said, “except maybe Ronald Neame. You can ask Ronnie Neame about that.” I did and Neame’s account would raise disturbing questions about Michael’s version of events.
Scammell entered the story because a rival, David Cesarani, had scooped him, interviewing Jill about the rape and publishing her account as part of his Koestler biography. In Michael’s view, Scammell was attempting not only to discredit Cesarani but also to destroy Jill’s report of the rape. I had had my own run-in with Scammell when, as American director of PEN, he had denied me access to board minutes dating from the period of Susan Sontag’s presidency. As a PEN member, I had a right to see the minutes, which I wanted to consult for my biography of her, and PEN’s Freedom-to-Write committee had supported my request thirteen to one (the holdout was an attorney associated with Sontag’s publisher). Telling Michael about Scammell’s shameful behaviour strengthened the bond between us, especially since Michael was a staunch partisan and believed in backing his friends to the hilt.
Scammell’s announcement that he was the “authorised biographer” also grated on Michael. “I don’t agree myself about definitive, authorised biographies. Absolute balls.” He handed over Scammell’s correspondence to me: “That’s a terrible letter, isn’t it?”
“Why hadn’t Jill seen Scammell?” Scammell’s letter pointed out that ten years earlier when he came calling, Michael had spoken with him but Jill had not. “She hadn’t told me about the rape,” Michael said. “She didn’t want to ... ” Michael hesitated and I added, “open the whole story.” I have to wonder, given what I was later to learn about Michael, if Jill ever wanted the whole story told. Julie told me she doubted her mother wanted Michael to know exactly what happened because he would not react as a normal man would. He had too much respect for Koestler as a writer to confront him. Just after Michael spoke of his admiration for Koestler’s “abilities,” I decided to put the question directly:
[CR] Michael, this is a hard question to deal with. It’s difficult putting yourself back in that time. What do you suppose you would have done if Jill had told you?
[MF] I don’t know.
[CR] It’s hard to say, I’m sure.
[MF] I think I would have written him a letter, you know. Something like that. It would have been a terrible shock to me.
Michael’s response confirmed Julie’s speculation that Jill would not have confided in Michael because she knew his response would not be visceral, but intellectual. But later, after interviewing Elizabeth Rushdie, Salmon Rushdie’s ex-wife, I began to doubt that Michael knew as little about the rape as his retrospective account suggested, even if Jill had not spelled out the details.
The more Michael talked about Koestler, the warmer his memories of the man became. Beaverbrook considered it quite a coup to get such a writer (“starting on his fame,” as Michael put it) into a paper that was admittedly thin during wartime. Michael believed it was important for his country to give Koestler, an exile, a “proper reception.” Koestler appreciated Michael’s efforts, Michael emphasised: “he took an interest in my life and I took an interest in his.”
“You’ll find me dodging all over the bloody place in my mind, but don’t you worry about that, you make order out of chaos,” Michael directed. “I will,” I replied. “I’ve got many more questions to ask you, but I’m perfectly willing to listen.” He wanted me to ask him everything, he assured me “and you must make the judgment about what you use and don’t use.” The dodging was oftentimes simply an expression of the gusto of a man with many stories to tell, and story-making is often a matter of digression, but there were occasions when I simply could not bring Michael to the point. I wondered whether he could not see the point —or wished to avoid it.
Michael loved to talk about books he read with Jill. The first was Wynwood Reade’s The Martyrdom of Man. H. G. Wells had called it one of the great books of the world, Michael pointed out, and it was one of the first presents he gave Jill at the White Tower restaurant. The book was not a European-based view of the world. “It is written like a poem and beautifully shaped. It is a defence of heresies. Heresies make the world go round.”
Mentioning the White Tower brought on memories of the war and Mary Welsh, then a reporter for Beaverbrook’s Daily Express. In these pre-Jill days, Michael used to frequent the restaurant with Mary and Connie Ernst, the daughter of renowned American attorney Morris Ernst.
[MF] Mary and I invited our fellow journalists to come and have a lunch with us — chiefly ones that had just come from America or Australia — and then halfway through the lunch we’d say to them, “You know, by the way, you’re paying for this meal because we’re giving you so much information.” We did have quite a big list of those who would come — and along came Hemingway. I’d never met him nor did she. It was a sunny day in the second year of the war and we put to him the proposition and he didn’t object to that at all and indeed was enamoured of it. “Come tomorrow, if you like, and I’ll take you to the Dorchester,” he said. Of course he went off with Mary Welsh. Farewell to Mary.
This farewell could not have been more breezy or light-hearted. She faded from our view like a ‘dissolve’ in a motion picture.
The period with Mary coincided with Michael’s years as editor of the Evening Standard. Lord Beaverbrook had hired Michael on the strength of Aneurin Bevan’s recommendation after putting Michael through a kind of on-the-job simulation. Michael enjoyed retelling the story of how Beaverbrook asked him to read the morning papers and then give him an account of the news. When Michael did so without hesitation, not even pausing to look at notes, he won the press proprietor’s admiration — and soon his affection. Beaverbrook enjoyed arguing with his journalists whatever their politics and Michael certainly did not keep his socialism a secret. Like Aneurin Bevan, Michael satisfied Beaverbrook’s intense curiosity about what the other side was thinking. Michael enjoyed quoting bits of Beaverbrook’s advice: “Don’t use question marks in headlines. It implies you don’t know the answer.”
Later Jill fit right into Beaverbrook’s circle, feeding the old man tasty bits of gossip about Labour Party personalities and sharing with him her hopes for Michael’s career. Beaverbrook did not ordinarily care for his journalists’ wives, so Michael was quite proud of how Jill charmed his employer.
But the Beaverbrook-Foot-Craigie attachment went much deeper. Michael was virtually a second son, adopted
